Old infrastructure and other challenges have meant that Dannhauser (and Durnacol) residents have had to get used to living without running water for days on end.
The crisis reached a point where community members, including Cllr Sipho Kunene and activist Farzanah Dookie, called a public meeting to be addressed by Amajuba District Municipality officials. The district municipality is responsible for providing water to Dannhauser Municipality.
From the onset, Cllr Kunene called for the meeting to be held in a responsible manner, with ‘no nasty language’.
Richard Fourie, a superintendent overseeing the provision of water in the area for Amajuba, took questions from a group of people – all of whom have been left waterless for days and in some cases, months on end.
The major complaints were the continual water outages and what was being done to alleviate this issue. Residents also said that previously, when Dannhauser Municipality oversaw the provision of water, there were ‘never any issues’.
Fourie explained that water to the area is fed from Chelmsford Dam, via a 250mm field steel pipe, to the Durnacol water plant for purification and from there, the supply is reticulated to Durnacol and Dannhauser.
“This pipe is very old and has multiple leaks, which impacts on the flow of water.
“This is why we are continuously losing supply.
“Some repairs have been done and a tender was put out to have more repairs carried out, but unfortunately the tender was never realised. Another contractor was then called in.
“The district municipality is working on this issue and we hope to soon have answers.”
He added that the municipality’s PMU (Project Management Unit that is responsible for the administration and financial management of Municipal Infrastructure Grant funds) will be considering a permanent way to ‘repair the troublesome pipeline’.
The main issue was the need to upgrade the raw water supply, as the plant is designed to process 8mg a day, but only up to 1.8mg is currently being treated.
“The Durnacol water plant has been upgraded, as the Dannhauser plant was too old to be considered for repairs.
“Load-shedding has had an impact, as Durnacol and Dannhauser are on a different schedule and that prolongs the problem of pumping water. But a generator has been purchased to run the raw water plant during load-shedding.”
However, he added that there is also a challenge here, as the vehicle that employees use to get to the generator and have it refuelled is currently in for repairs.
The road to the pump station is also ‘in a bad state’, which is impacted on even further when the sluice gates (at the dam) are open and water flows over the access road.
There was a problem with a faulty Eskom cable at the reservoir, but that has been overcome by putting in a generator.
‘Is the water brought in by tankers safe?’
Asked if the water from tankers provided by Amajuba during times of outages is safe to drink, Fourie said the water is purified by the bulk water supplier, uThukela Water, and that if there were problems, it was uThukela Water that would have to answer.
Residents also expressed concern as to how the new housing project, adjacent to the community hospital, would be catered for. “1000 new houses will be built. Right now, we don’t have enough water in the town, so how will these homes be supplied?” asked one resident.
Again, Amajuba’s PMU was referred to answer the question and Cllr Kunene said he would ask a PMU representative to be at a follow-up meeting.
There were also questions over the water supply to Koppie Alleen (outside Dannhauser town) done by uThukela Water. The meeting heard that ‘unauthorised water connections’ on the pipeline had severely impacted on the supply to that area.
Cllr Kunene said he would be looking at Dannhauser Municipality having its own water licence, which would give it the authority to provide water instead of Amajuba.
He called on Amajuba to ‘fix what is not okay, right now’.
Other questions were asked about the billing system and how water meters are read, with one resident questioning the veracity of the bills received, ‘considering we do not get water’.
Again, this was placed at the door of the billing system, that was not represented at the meeting.
